The present invention relates essentially to an improved ornamental wheel hub cap.
There is already known from the U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,673 and commonly owned by applicant's assignee an ornamental wheel hub cap adapted to be removably secured within a stepped portion of the rim or felloe of a wheel of a vehicle through the agency of a resiliently deformable ring clipped into the stepped portion and discontinued or split to form at least two free ends connected together by at least one resilient deformable means such as, for instance, a wire allowing the radial deformation of said ring.
Moreover, a removable strap could be mounted between both free ends of the ring for exerting a prestress upon the latter against the force exerted by the resiliently deformable means so as to avoid the deformation of the cap-ring assembly before mounting onto the wheel rim and also to allow the mounting of this assembly through clipping onto the rim after removal of the strap.
It is therefore understood that after the ornamental wheel hub cap has been mounted onto the wheel rim or felloe, the strap becomes useless and constitutes a lost or, wasted element. Moreover the strap requires an individual manufacturing step separate from the other elements of the ornamental wheel hub cap. Finally, the mounting of the ornamental wheel hub cap onto the wheel rim requires a special intervention upon the strap to extract it from the ring of the ornamental wheel hub cap prior to carrying out the mounting.